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Wednesday, 11 July 2012

Adonis Devereux - Love Comes Twice - A review

First of all, the bad news. I must confess that this is not my
favourite of Adonis Devereux's books I read so far. It's not for any specific
fault of the book; I just feel that the scope and intensity of the story needed
more length to come into full bloom. The majesty of the plot deserved a more
measured pace; the intricacy of the sex scene a more nuanced description; the
dazzling richness of the world building could fill volumes on its own; and the
conflicts and development of the characters (both considerable) could have been
explored even more fully. My calculation is that the book is too short by at
least a half.

But, for all that, I could not be convinced to cut off a
star from my rating. Just perhaps a little tip from a corner of the fifth
star.

The book still stands head, shoulders, nipples and navel above the
crowd. It's almost sacrilegious to list this under Romance. Romance happens (very
much; hot, passionate, no nonsense, heartrending romance) but this is first and
foremost a wonderful fantasy story, set in a world of flabbergasting
complexity.

Gilalion is so vast, so rich and so unique that really there
is no point in trying to describe it. There is a handful of novels set in this
universe already, and more to come, I am sure, so it's not a place that can be
summed up in a paragraph or so. There are human kingdoms and Ausir kingdoms
(Ausir look like humans, except they are longer lived, and have horns, and are
all in all hotter and smarter). There are wrathful, quarrelsome gods, trolls and
giants. But not boring and bald like it sounds here. Grand, and majestic and
surprising. Look, you got to go and read the books, instead of sitting there
reading my review.

The hero of the story here is Kiltarin, the Prince of
the Larenai Ausirs, son of the God-king Kelvirith who appeared briefly in Bride
for the God-king. Being the prince of a kingdom with an immortal king has its
drawbacks: knowing he is not likely to ever inherit the throne, Kiltarin leaves
his place at court to hunt Nohrs (let's say trolls, but scarier) in the
wilderness.

In the wilderness he makes friends, here and there, like the
Tamari Ausirs, an estranged Ausir population far in a barren icy country.
Discovering the capital of this country, Icedeep, and its local customs and
traditions is already enough to justify the price of the book.

The
heroine is an amazing, complex, mysterious, loving, lusty, dangerous, deeply
dark woman named Riane. When the Tamari king, on his death-quest, finds her
asleep under the ice of a frozen lake, and wakes her up, she has no memory of
her identity, except that in her sleep `she heard the whispers of the world'.
And if that is not awesome, I don't know what is.

Much of what happens in
the book has to do with the mystery of who and what Riane is, and it is quite a
ride to discover the truth.

There are moments towards the end of the book
when I thought, `Is this the same book I started the other day?', such is the
deep change that comes upon all the characters involved. It might easily have
been a trilogy!

7 comments:

Complex heroine, yes, most definitely. Talking with the author I was told she never quite "fell in place", a statement that kept me thinking ever since. I think now that Riane as a person, not a character, cannot be grasped easily. That her level, or kind, of experience of life is so very unique as to be extremely difficult to capture. And yet, the book does capture her somehow, or her mystery in a very haunting way. I really recommend this book.

Definitely love this author/s. As for the honesty, if I don't like a book, these days, I just don't review it. Kinder to everybody, because if I go snarky, it's real no-nonsense snark. But if I praise, I mean it.For the "can't like every book" part, I am strangey confused. I like "Bride for the God-King" best, so far, of AD's books, but "Love Comes Twice" has a strange magical quality to it. It is not a fully balanced book. It is as if the grandness of the world and the depth of the characters swept the authors away. Where the book lacks something in "craftiness" it gains twice as much in raw, undiluted awesomeness. Give it a try.